Pipeline Engineers: What Safety Issues Keep You Up at Night?
Pipeline Engineers: What Safety Issues Keep You Up at Night?
(OP)
Hi Everyone!
New member here, but I hope to add some value or at least ask good questions.
I'm really curious about pipeline safety and what pipeline engineers think and do about it.
Specifically I'm thinking:
What, in your opinion, is the biggest safety threat on most pipelines?
How do you balance the cost of safety programs with the perceived value of the service?
How does your company handle safety? Is it is priority or just a "cost of doing business"?
Does the priority for safety vary by the size of a company or is there another commonality between companies who value safety more/less?
These are just a few ideas, but please share anything you feel is important to the topic!
Tim
New member here, but I hope to add some value or at least ask good questions.
I'm really curious about pipeline safety and what pipeline engineers think and do about it.
Specifically I'm thinking:
What, in your opinion, is the biggest safety threat on most pipelines?
How do you balance the cost of safety programs with the perceived value of the service?
How does your company handle safety? Is it is priority or just a "cost of doing business"?
Does the priority for safety vary by the size of a company or is there another commonality between companies who value safety more/less?
These are just a few ideas, but please share anything you feel is important to the topic!
Tim





RE: Pipeline Engineers: What Safety Issues Keep You Up at Night?
RE: Pipeline Engineers: What Safety Issues Keep You Up at Night?
GREAT COMMENT and so true!!! So to follow up on your greatest fear of a lack of oversight on contracted engineers I have one question:
What can/should be done to mitigate the risk in your opinion?
RE: Pipeline Engineers: What Safety Issues Keep You Up at Night?
At the end of the decade, good inspections save money. Looked at quarter by quarter, they are quite expensive.
RE: Pipeline Engineers: What Safety Issues Keep You Up at Night?
1. Can you define a "good" inspection? What does it have that the typical inspection doesn't?
2. Also any tips for working with the "bean-counters" to help them to understand the value of an inspection?
3. What is the average cost of an inspection of an upigable line?
RE: Pipeline Engineers: What Safety Issues Keep You Up at Night?
Not that I am in any way bitter.
RE: Pipeline Engineers: What Safety Issues Keep You Up at Night?
I see corrosion allowances cut and cut by shortening the expected pipeline life and then exceeding that shortened life by decades without anyone even aware of what design life of the system was specified in the original design.
I regularly see competent designs that have elements that require they be revisited periodically, and I find that those future analysis are just not done.
David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering
Law is the common force organized to act as an obstacle of injustice Frédéric Bastiat
RE: Pipeline Engineers: What Safety Issues Keep You Up at Night?
2. Also any tips for working with the "bean-counters" to help them to understand the value of an inspection? conduct a risk assessment and invite them to participate...
RE: Pipeline Engineers: What Safety Issues Keep You Up at Night?
Bill
RE: Pipeline Engineers: What Safety Issues Keep You Up at Night?
The two biggest problems, this according to PHMSA statistics, are
1) Failure of pipeline instrument & controls, the #1 cause of gas pipeline leaks, releases and "incidents", and
2) Third party damage to pipeline facilities, the #1 cause of the greatest losses to life and property. and #3,
3) Searching the code for keywords, rather than reading and understanding it from cover to cover. and #4
4) Copying and pasting from irrelevant previous designs. Now pasting from offshore to onshore, because nobody has any onshore experience these days. and 5
5) Copying and pasting from previous designs without understanding why something was included, or designed in some particular manner for a particular reason, which actually does not have any bearing on the present task.
Fortunately safety factors and the fact that full design loads are ever achieved cover the most serious errors of 3,4 & 5, but lately that is not only a symptom of engineers. It seems that everybody, from railroad operators to real estate agents are too busy Facebooking and iPodding to approach having any degree of competence in their real jobs. Most can hardly walk down the sidewalk without bumping into me. iPod Zombies! I need to invent an APP that warns them when they're about to crash into me.
I hate Windowz 8!!!!
RE: Pipeline Engineers: What Safety Issues Keep You Up at Night?
Also, what weapons do independent pipeline engineers have at their disposal to fight back when there is a legitimate concern about safety?
RE: Pipeline Engineers: What Safety Issues Keep You Up at Night?
Thanks for contributing! So who is responsible for oversight in these cases? Is this a case of corporations taking advantage of overworked regulators or is the project lead looking the other way due to pressure described by Snorgy or worse, incompetent?
RE: Pipeline Engineers: What Safety Issues Keep You Up at Night?
If I understand you correctly, you are suggesting that many inspections completely skip an evaluation of the design and whether it meets current safety codes?!?! That's surprising!
Also, most inspections are focused on just "signing off" on the fact that the existing structure is free of immediate danger? Is that what I'm understanding?
RE: Pipeline Engineers: What Safety Issues Keep You Up at Night?
RE: Pipeline Engineers: What Safety Issues Keep You Up at Night?
Also curious, when you say "third party" is there any definition to that? Most pipelines run through very remote areas so I'm assuming that these accidents are happening during times of construction/repair or am I assuming too much?
RE: Pipeline Engineers: What Safety Issues Keep You Up at Night?
I thought that would be a tough question that would require a wordy post. But it's not. It's simple. We, the consulting and contracting engineers, have spent the last 3-4 decades with our thumbs so deeply inserted up our backsides, allowing ourselves to play cutthroat bidding wars and commoditizing ourselves to the point where we have destroyed our own self-respect and reduced our own credibility by losing sight of what really matters, just so we can make money by saying "yes" to whatever hare-brained notion the Client wants. Sadly, that is the true state of "engineering" today.
What do we have to fight back with? That's easy too: just refuse to get bullied, and turn away Clients who impose those rules of engagement on us. Then, the only things left to decide will be how much business do we want to lose and how much money is enough to make us compromise our values?
Sort of like the famous politician who once said to the prostitute, "We have already established what you are, now the only thing we are negotiating is the price."
RE: Pipeline Engineers: What Safety Issues Keep You Up at Night?
I've heard that saying before and it is true. What percentage of jobs/contracts fall in the category of "sell your soul"? Is there a way you can screen those jobs out when you are in the bidding process?
In short, I would love to have your insight on some tips to avoid this type of disaster.
RE: Pipeline Engineers: What Safety Issues Keep You Up at Night?
David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering
Law is the common force organized to act as an obstacle of injustice Frédéric Bastiat
RE: Pipeline Engineers: What Safety Issues Keep You Up at Night?
My work isn't in pipelines specifically, nor am I a degreed anything, but as a Quality Tech I certainly feel the same pains about what goes on in the production and manufacture of piping and related products. What I lay awake about most is dealing with people who, right or wrong,think a code section doesn't make sense for our application and that they can ignore it or circumvent it. Sometimes the rule isn't logical on the face of things, but someone, somewhere observed a need for it and under all the mumbo jumbo there is a sound basis for it. In most cases these people have never even looked at the codes. These are usually the same ones who gripe about big government or any type of rule, so far I haven't done it, but would like to suggest they look in a mirror and blame themselves for creating a need for more rules.
RE: Pipeline Engineers: What Safety Issues Keep You Up at Night?
RE: Pipeline Engineers: What Safety Issues Keep You Up at Night?
RE: Pipeline Engineers: What Safety Issues Keep You Up at Night?
RE: Pipeline Engineers: What Safety Issues Keep You Up at Night?
RE: Pipeline Engineers: What Safety Issues Keep You Up at Night?
Good one!
I have seen this in action in companies which (to survive in the market or what?) bid very low in the ENGINEERING jobs and then (post award) ask their engineers to finish the job within "time", and this time is already reduced to half by these big bosses who (in their own thinking) claim to know everything about every discipline and "I know how different discipline increase their man-hours".
Amazingly clients don't ask these low bidders the million dollar (or maybe more in cases of failures) question, "Did you understand the scope?"
These companies then just shoot the DELIVERABLES out of their doorsteps, dump on clients, and claim the milestone progress. Burden lies with the client engineers to REVIEW the documents/drawings who are already looking after a score of jobs ...
And this "Searching for keywords" business thrives.
God! Save the earth!
RE: Pipeline Engineers: What Safety Issues Keep You Up at Night?
I know we don't work for the same company, but could our management teams or teams we have had experience with be cloned? I constantly hear "that doesn't apply to us" in regards to code sections that management doesn't like, or get sent on wild goose chases to prove or justify the need to follow the code. That's what the book says isn't a good enough response.
RE: Pipeline Engineers: What Safety Issues Keep You Up at Night?
RE: Pipeline Engineers: What Safety Issues Keep You Up at Night?
I hate Windowz 8!!!!
RE: Pipeline Engineers: What Safety Issues Keep You Up at Night?
Sounds like you all contributed a lot to DouglassT's School Research Project.